Maarten Sap

Assistant Professor, Language Technologies Institute
Human-Computer Interaction Institute

Research Area

Computational Social Science, Conversational AI, Discourse and Pragmatics, Fairness and Ethics in Language Technology

Maarten Sap is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute (LTI). His research centers on enhancing natural language processing (NLP) systems with social intelligence and understanding social biases in language. His work encompasses ethical AI development, focusing on the implications of AI in human interactions and addressing biases in language models. Additionally, he investigates narrative dynamics, analyzing how stories shape and reflect social contexts, and delves into the complexities of toxic language to improve AI moderation tools. 

Dr. Sap earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington, where his dissertation focused on developing "Positive AI" models with social commonsense capabilities. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, he held roles as a postdoctoral researcher and visiting scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, where he worked on socially aware AI systems. His work has received significant recognition, including multiple best paper awards and nominations at conferences like ACL, EMNLP, and FAccT, as well as the Amazon Research Award and Google Research Awards for his work on reliability and biases in AI.

At CMU, Dr. Sap teaches responsible AI and data science, mentoring future researchers in socially responsible AI. He also co-leads DEI initiatives and leads the DEI and Belonging committee.

Research Areas